Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
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Celine Dion at her show's March 2011 opening " One missed cue can throw the entire show out of whack." —CHRISTIE MOELLER N and what didn't work. I'll start to give my excuses, and she'll say, 'Don't ever do that, don't apologize.' Yet, if you're getting her into a robe and her elbow hits me, she'll ask, 'Are you OK? Are you sure?'" ow retired, Anne Pierce has dressed a plethora of stars, includ- ing Mac Davis, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, Barry Manilow, Shirley MacLaine, Joan Rivers, and Diana Ross, who once demoted her on the spot because she was wearing eyeglasses around her neck that Ross called "distracting" when they reflected a stage light. "What I loved about being with Joan [Rivers] was that you didn't sit around during the day," Pierce says. "We'd go shopping, or sailing on Lake Tahoe. You saw things. With the others you didn't." The respect was mutual: "Anne Pierce was one of the great ones," Rivers says. "In her day, to have her dress you was a way of having arrived, just as having a Bob Mackie gown or Nelson Riddle arrangements did. It meant, 'I'm a headliner.'" Rivers, of course, toured the country for decades doing stand-up, so is especially adept at having a dresser for her stage performances. "They know what your body really looks like," she says. "They know who you see and who you're 'out' with. They know what secrets you've said on the phone to whom. They know your most intimate habits." Tracy Bohl, now the wardrobe supervisor at Peepshow, remembers work- ing with theater legend Michael Crawford, the original Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. "I always brought someone with me, because he wants to enter- tain," she says. "They would laugh at his jokes, so I could get my work done." Before a performer makes it to the level of Michael Crawford or Diana Ross, they often lean on their dresser for support, especially if they're away from home. "I have 15 girls, French girls, Russian girls, and they can be very young," says Eva Liden, head of wardrobe for MGM Grand's Crazy Horse Paris. "They ask what doctor I go to, what is this in the pharmacy. As much as I'm a dresser, I'm also a mother and a psychologist; I don't just put their costumes on and zip them up. They'll get dressed up after the show and ask, 'Is this appropriate to go out?' and I always say, 'You look beautiful.'" V VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 113 PHOTOGRAPHY BY DENISE TRUSCELLO (INSET)